Tableau Online Help

Change the Tableau Bridge Settings or Computer

This topic describes how to change the way Tableau Bridge client runs, or change the computer or site that a Tableau Bridge client is associated with.

Run Tableau Bridge as a Windows service

You can set Tableau Bridge to run as a Windows service, so it can keep running your refresh schedules or live queries even after you log off Windows. You can do this if the Windows account that runs Tableau Bridge is a local administrator on the computer.

Open the Windows system tray, and select the Tableau Bridge icon to open Tableau Bridge.

Near the bottom of the window, for Mode, select Service.

A sign-in window appears, prompting you to enter Windows credentials. For example, enter your own credentials if you are a local administrator on your computer.

In your list of Windows services, Tableau Bridge appears as Tableau Bridge service. You can see this in the Windows Services console or on the Services tab in the Task Manager.

To stop Tableau Bridge from running as a service:

Near the bottom of the window, for Mode, select Application.

When Tableau Bridge is running in Application mode, it can refresh extracts and allow live queries only when you or your users are logged on to Windows. For more information, see How does it work?.

Add a new computer (Tableau Bridge client) to perform a scheduled refresh

When you publish an extract data source, you can set up a refresh schedule for the data source. As part of the schedule, you can specify the computer. The computer you specify is the Tableau Bridge client that performs the extract refresh.

If the computer you want to select is not available from the drop-down list in the Schedule an Extract Refresh dialog box, in addition to being the data source owner or a site administrator, you must sign in to that client. If you don't have the client on your computer, you must download and install it. For more information about installing Tableau Bridge, see Install Tableau Bridge.

Note: Alternatively, if you don't want to maintain the published extract data source yourself, after publishing the data source, you can ask your site administrator to either reassign it to a different client or to manage the data source using a centrally-managed client. For more information, see Manage data sources using a centrally-managed Tableau Bridge client.

Change the Tableau Bridge client that performs the scheduled refresh from Tableau Online

You can change the Tableau Bridge client used to perform the scheduled extract refresh of a data source. You can only assign the extract refresh schedule of a data source to a client that you are signed in to.

Sign in to Tableau Online and navigate to the All Data Sources page.

Click the name of the data source and click the Extract Refreshes tab.

On the right side of the page, click the button next to Refresh this extract on.

In the dialog box, select a different computer (i.e., the Tableau Bridge client) that you want to perform the scheduled extract refresh, and then click Save.

Note: If the data source requires a user name and password to access the underlying data, open the client on the new computer, and edit the connection information to embed the database credentials. You can use the Test Connection option in the client to check whether the data source can access the underlying data.

Designate a Tableau Bridge client to support live connections

Sign in to Tableau Online as an administrator, go to the site’s Settings page, and click the Bridge tab.

In the Type column of the table that lists registered clients, select Extract and Live next to the name of the new client.

The data sources that contain live connections and are managed by Tableau Bridge are assigned to the new client.

Manage extract data sources using a central Tableau Bridge client

As an administrator, you can perform extract refreshes for data sources using a centrally-managed client. To designate a client as the central client, simply reassign the extract refresh schedules of multiple data sources to a specific client.

Note: If you’re using the same central client to handle both scheduled extract refreshes and load balancing of live queries, performance of the client could be affected if there are a significant number of live queries processing at the same time. To optimize for performance, Tableau recommends that you designate one central client to handle extract refreshes and designate a second client to handle the load balancing of live queries.

Switch the site a Tableau Bridge client is associated with

When you want a Tableau Bridge client to refresh data published to a different Tableau Online site, you unlink the existing client and sign in to the new site.

Open the Tableau Bridge client icon in the Windows system tray, and select Unlink.

This removes the list of data sources, schedules, and connection information from the client.

In Tableau Desktop, select Server > Start Tableau Bridge Client, and sign in to the new site.

If this client refreshes extracts, configure its data sources and refresh schedules.

If you want this client to maintain live connections, you need to have administrator access to the Tableau Online site. On the site Settings page on the Bridge tab, you select Extract and Live for this client in the Clients Status table.

When you unlink a Tableau Bridge client, a site administrator might also need to remove the refresh schedules it was associated with on Tableau Online. For more information, see Effects of exit and unlink in the topic Stop Tableau Bridge Refreshes.

Configure a timeout limit for extract refreshes in Tableau Bridge

To ensure that long running refresh tasks don't prevent other extracts from refreshing, you can enforce a time limit, also known as a timeout limit, for refresh tasks performed by a Tableau Bridge client. The timeout limit is the longest allowable time for a single extract to complete a refresh task before it's canceled.

By default, the timeout limit for a client to perform a refresh task is set to 24 hours. If a refresh task exceeds the timeout limit set in the client, the client cancels the refresh task. If an extract refresh is canceled as a result of a timeout, you will be notified in the client and an email alert will be sent to the data source (in this case, extract) owner.

You can change the timeout limit for a client through the Tableau Bridge configuration file.

Note: The client must be restarted for any changes made to the configuration file to take effect.

On the computer where the client is installed, go to the Configuration folder in the My Tableau Bridge Repository.

The default location of the Configuration folder is C:\Users\jsmith\Documents\My Tableau Bridge Repository\Configuration.

Open the TabBridgeClientConfiguration.txt file.

Next to extractRefreshTimeout, change the time allowed for a refresh task to complete.

Note: If you don't see the parameter in the configuration file, you can add "extractRefreshTimeout" : 08:00:00", to the dataSourceRefreshSettings setting like in the example below.

Save and close the file.

Exit and restart the client for the changes to take effect. The way you restart the client depends on whether the client is running in Application or Service mode.

For Application mode: from the client menu, select Exit.

For Service mode: from the Mode drop-down menu, select Application; from the client menu, select Exit.

Configure email alerts for incomplete extract refreshes

As a data source owner whose extract refreshes are performed by Tableau Bridge, you can configure Tableau Online to send you email alerts when scheduled refreshes are taking longer than expected and haven't completed. By configuring the email alert to a time that's appropriate for your extract, you can get notified before a potential refresh failure or gap in data freshness.

Configure refresh email alerts

By default, a refresh email alert is sent 24 hours after the scheduled start time for data source with an incomplete refresh. If a scheduled refresh completes within 24 hours of its scheduled start time, you will not see an email alert.

In some cases, you might want to be notified sooner than 24 hours. You can configure the refresh email alert to an amount of time that better aligns with a duration of a particular refresh.

Sign in to Tableau Online and navigate to the All Data Sources page.

Click the name of the data source, click the Extract Refreshes tab, and then click the Select All button.

The email alert factors all the schedules for a data source when determining when to send the email alert regardless even if you select one schedule.

From the Actions menu, select Edit Refresh Email Alert.

In the Refresh Email Alert dialog box, specify the hours and minutes following a scheduled refresh time that the alert should be sent, and click OK.

Considerations when managing refresh email alerts

One email alert per data source: You can configure one refresh email alert for an extract data source. If an extract data source has multiple refresh schedules, the email alert is sent based on the next scheduled time across all schedules. Review the following two scenarios that demonstrate how the email alert timing works.

Scenario 1

Suppose you have an extract data source with one scheduled refresh set to run daily at 5 AM. For the purposes of this example, the refresh usually takes 30 minutes for Tableau Bridge to complete at that time of day.

If you specify 3 hours for the email alert, you will be sent an email at around 8 AM if the refresh hasn’t completed by that time.

Scenario 2:

Suppose you have the same extract data source from Scenario 1, with same time specified for the email alert against the following three schedules:

Schedule 1 - runs daily at 5 AM

Schedule 2 - runs twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, at 1 PM

Schedule 3 - runs once a week, on Saturday, at 12 AM

For the purposes of this example, though it can take as few as 30 minutes for Tableau Bridge to complete the refresh at 5 AM, during business hours, the refresh can take up to 3 hours to complete.

Like the first scenario, if the refresh for schedule 1 hasn’t completed by 8 AM, you will be sent an email. Regardless of the refresh for "schedule 1" being completed or not, you will be sent an email at around 4 PM on Tuesday if the refresh for "schedule 2" hasn’t completed. Similarly, regardless of what happened on Tuesday, if the refresh for "schedule 2" hasn’t completed by 4 PM on Thursday, you will be sent an email. Finally, if the refresh for "schedule 3" hasn’t completed by 3 AM, you will be sent an email.

Email alert time is based on the expected start time of the scheduled refresh: The time you specify for the refresh email alert is the amount of time after the scheduled start time of the refresh. If you see email alerts too frequently or never at all, consider increasing the time to decrease email alert frequency or decrease the time to increase email alert frequency.

The default is 24 hours.

Email alert can't be turned off: Though email alerts can't be turned off, you can increase the time for an email alert so that the scheduled refresh completes before the email alert can be sent.

Refresh failure emails must be enabled: In addition to refresh failure emails being enabled for the site (by the site admin), as the data source owner, you must also have refresh failure emails enabled for your account.

Manage the size of Tableau Bridge log files

The Tableau Bridge client creates logs of activities as part of its normal operation. You might need to use these logs when you are troubleshooting issues with Tableau Bridge or if Tableau Support requests logs from you to help resolve an issue.

By default, the maximum size allowed for a Tableau Bridge log files is 25 MB. When a log file exceeds that size limit, a new log file is created. When the number of log files reaches 40, which is the default value for the maximum number of allowed log files, the oldest log file is deleted.

You can change the default values for these parameters through the Tableau Bridge configuration file.

Note: The client must be restarted for any changes made to the configuration file to take effect.

On the computer where the client is installed, go to the Configuration folder in the My Tableau Bridge Repository.

The default location of the Configuration folder is C:\Users\jsmith\Documents\My Tableau Bridge Repository\Configuration.

Open the TabBridgeClientConfiguration.txt file.

Next to loggerSettings, change the values for the following parameters:

"maxLogFileSizeInMB" : 25

"maxBackupLogFileCount" : 40

Save and close the file.

Exit and then restart the client for the changes to take effect. The way you restart the client depends on whether the client is running in Application or Service mode.

For Application mode: from the client menu, select Exit.

For Service mode: from the Mode drop-down menu, select Application; from the client menu, select Exit.